Pixy Brings Machine Vision To Robot World

Just what is the Pixy? It happens to be a tiny camera that measures roughly half the size of a business card is capable of detecting objects which you have “trained” it to detect. This particular form of “training” is very different from Jedi training, as it is done thanks to holding the object located in front of Pixy’s lens and pressing a button. Pixy would then try to look for objects that sport similar color signatures via a dedicated dual-core processor which is capable of processing images at 50 frames per second. Pixy will then send its findings that will comprise of the sizes and locations of all detected objects, where that can be accomplished through a variety of interfaces such as UART serial, SPI, I2C, digital or analog I/O.

Pixy is capable of detecting hundreds of objects from seven different color signatures. It is right now a Kickstarter campaign, where it will be able to be yours as long as you contribute a minimum of $59. Pixy happens to be a partnership between Carnegie Mellon University and a small Austin-based company that call themselves Charmed Labs. As Pixy is powered by its own processor, it will not bog down the Arduino’s CPU with processing images, so one should not experience too many performance issues.